Jackass Critics

Film and DVD Reviews.

Straw Dogs review by The Grim Ringler

In his long
and varied career director Sam Peckinpah was known to tackle some pretty
weighty issues but none was closer to his heart nor more important to his films
than violence. In the films of Peckinpah violence is a great, dark force
Man is always trying to overcome but which we never seem to be able to contain
or control, and in the end, it seemed that it was violence that was left
standing when the dust cleared. Many have said that this was due to his
attraction to violence; their proof being that his films are so bloody and
grim, but I would wager that it wasnt that Peckinpah was attracted to
the violence as much as he was repelled by it. Man is the only animal that
truly has the choice to kill or spare, to evolve or devolve and I think that
Mr. Peckinpah saw that and felt it was, more than anything else, the
most important issue to cover in his films. You can especially see this in the
supplementary material included in this fine two-disc set which show how
frustrated the director was when two well regarded film critics didnt get
his very controversial film Straw Dogs. Its easy to watch SD and
to get caught up in one very dark and harrowing sequence in which the lead
actress is raped but seems to enjoy it, but if you watch the film closely you
will see that this isnt the scariest or most controversial scene in the film
at all. That scene would be when the lead character, David (played brilliantly
by a young Dustin Hoffman), becomes what he hates in order to survive
because that is the dark secret Peckinpah has been whispering for years.
Man cannot escape his innate violence.

The story
begins with David, a brilliant American mathematician, and his beautiful young
wife Amy (Susan George who is equally good here in a much more demanding
role) arriving in a small British (Cornish to be correct and copy from the box)
village which Amy had stayed at as a child. David is working off of a research
grant and needs the time and quiet to work on his research and he secretly
wants to be away from the racial and war strife and anger raging in America.
Amy isnt quite as pleased to be back on her old stomping grounds though, the
memory and figure of an ex lover still in the small village, as well as the
isolated, small town mindset which had existed before as well. And Amy, a
striking woman enjoying the sexual revolution to its fullest a she creates a
stir when she arrives sans bra, is the kind of woman that makes women, and men,
nervous. What was intended to be a quiet and romantic trip away from home so
David could work soon changes though when the local men he has hired to fix a
garage badly in need of repair begin peeping on his wife and spend more time
getting drunk than they do working. And as this is happening the tension
between David and Amy is growing, the gulf between them getting greater by the
day as Amy begins to feel more and more isolated from David and emotionally
abandoned while David feels that his wife doesnt respect the work he is trying
to do. The greatest divide between them comes when Amys pet cat is found by
David hanging dead in the closet, obviously killed by one of the workmen, and
when he cannot summon the courage to confront them on this Amy is enraged,
thinking her husband no more than a coward. Instead of ferreting out the
culprit, the murderer, he has agreed to go hunting with the men the next day,
telling Amy hell surprise them with the question. When David is off though Amys
ex-lover, who was also on the hunt and working on the house, returns to her in
the guise of romance, but, in a scene that damned this film in many peoples
minds, this romance quickly turns to violence and the ambiguity which results
has challenged filmgoers for years. On the hunt, while his wife is being
brutally raped, David realizes he has been stranded out on the moors and, after
many hours, makes his way home. He fires the men the next day but something has
changed between he and Amy, and there is not a gulf between them there is an
abyss. The true test for David, a man who abandoned his home country in fear of
the emotional and revolutionary turmoil there, is yet to come though when he
protects a suspected child molester from the wrathful hands of the men who had
worked oh his home and the father of a young girl who has come up missing. And as
the men, drunk and enraged and willing to kill to retrieve this man they are
searching for, besiege the Sumners home and begin waging war on the young
couple within, David must overcome his fear, overcome his restraint, and be
willing to kill to protect his wife, his home, and the life of this man. And in
essence, must become a monster like the men outside.

A director
drawn to violence, this is probably Peckinpahs darkest and most
controversial film, and mainly for once scene the rape scene. The scene
begins with Amy finding her ex-lover at the door and telling him to leave, but
as he persists she allows him in. The man takes this as an invitation for more
and when he tries to force himself on Amy she rebuffs him. This man though has
long since tired of Amy and her teasing though (we would intuit here that she
was a tease when she was a young girl and that was how she hooked up with the
lout in the first place) and he forces himself on her. Peckinpah makes
this already graphic and wrenching scene all the harder to watch by making the
audience complicit in it, using first person view-points of both victim and
attacker, and pushing the camera in as close as it will go so it feels as if we
are in the middle of the violence. The controversy stems from the fact that
during the rape Amy stops fighting the man and slowly begins to enjoy it, an
idea that is understandably vile and without defense if taken out of context.
What Peckinpah is showing though is that Amy, so lost and alone and at
that moment so hateful of her husband, that shes willing to take any comfort,
even that of a rapist. And the man, the rapist, does love her, in a sick
way, and becomes tenderer as she allows him to continue. This is not a scene to
be taken free of the context of the film and analyzed; it is a scene to be
viewed in the entirety, which then shows how very dark Amys heart has become. A
woman who feels intellectually and emotionally inferior to her husband and who
seems to want more of a man who will take care of her and will be the traditionally
strong and silent type, she prefers violent love to the cold, distant love of
her husband. Perhaps because its something, or perhaps because its
passionate. But just as she is going through this David himself is changing. Alone
and on the hunt David kills a bird, using a gun for the first time in his
life, and part of him is also lost. An innocent part that he had retained to
the detriment of his marriage and his life. He is a coward, a man afraid to trust
his country, and a man who feels deep down that he has no right being with the
beautiful woman that is his wife. He is walled in by fear. Amys horror is yet
to come though as another of the men has followed her attacker and now he too wants
Amy, and again Amy sees that what she wants isnt right and she is betrayed by
her ex-lover as he holds her down while the other man has his way with her. This
is a very hard sequence to watch, even for me, who has seen this three times at
least not, its not a good sequence. But thats the point. Peckinpah isnt
interested in making violence palatable. He doesnt care if you squirm. He wants
you to because it means that it sickens you. Good. Just as he is willing to
make the protagonists bastards, he too is willing to show you things you wish
he would not, forcing you to think, to judge, to face violence and ask yourself
what it is and what we are.

As much
about the death of a marriage as it is of innocence, one of the things Straw
Dogs is saying is that while to worship at the altar of violence may be
wrong, to cower in fear of it is just as wrong. This is not a film of black and
white but gray. The man David is protecting is a bad man, and perhaps
does deserve to be punished, not killed, but punished for what he has done. So how
many of us would risk our homes, and our lives and the life of our partner to
stand up for what we believe? David is a coward, yes, until it counts the most.
While Amy is not a villain by any stretch in this film, she is more of a coward
than even she imagines, as she is willing to give away all she may believe in
to be safe again.

The acting
in this film is superb, both George and Hoffman standing their ground
against one another and neither giving up an inch. Their roles are the pivot
points for the rest of the film, and if they fail, if they make the Sumners
too cowardly, or too childish, or even too loving, then the film is not as
gripping or as interesting. The heart of the film is their relationship and the
fragility of it. And as usual Peckinpah knows what he likes and it
works. The violence here is very hard to stomach, and the ending is relentless,
but this is the textbook example of violent images put to good use. This is not
exploitation; this is a very grim look at reality and war, personal war, and
what it means to stand for what you believe in. We may turn from this and films
like it, but remember, it wasnt long ago in America that people had to
be willing to die for personal rights and beliefs. This is not so old a notion.
The worst two things I can say about the film are that its slow and this is
deliberate, as this isnt an action picture, its a dramatic thriller. And that
the violence, especially the rape scene, is very, very hard to watch, but
again, this was intentional. This sort of a scene should be awful to see
and make you sick. Otherwise it is glorification, not damnation.

The two-disc
set from Criterion is as beautiful as any they have released. The film
looks immaculate and is a joy to see. And, as if you couldnt tell, this is the
uncut print of the film, a film that had several minutes shorn when it was
released in America. The supplements include a very good feature length
documentary on Peckinpah titled Sam Peckinpah: Man of Iron which
has interviews with people the director had worked with and who give an idea of
the man behind the films. Also on the disc is a short documentary about Dustin
Hoffman on the location of the set, behind the scenes footage, an interview
with the films producer and lead actress George, trailers, and two
hilarious letters Peckinpah had sent two well regarded movie critics in
regards to their reviews of the film.

This is not
an easy film to watch, but its one that should be watched. In its own way it
is an American classic and deserves to finally start getting more of that
recognition.